We have a fourteen year old Yorky mix. Anyone comes around during the day she barks, we praise her. At night, however, she justs emits a low growl to wake everyone up. We are sailors out of Alaska. On this trip I am sure we would have been boarded at least twice in the last four years if not for Mollie. When we move ashore we will have another small, intelligent dog backed up by a War Dog , or two. I know one old boy that if he were to give the word, you be dead. My brother’s dogs will all begin barking on command. He has a good mix of dogs.

Whether you’re a “hardcore prepper” or not, this book is a great addition to your library. Some of the sections are kind of short, and they only skim the surface of the topic, so you’re not being inundated with too much information at one time. Read the book, digest it well, read it again… and if you need to know more, you can always visit Jim over at Survival Weekly where he blogs about survival and preparedness, too!

Doug owns a rock hauling business in Tennessee and plans to bug-in with his family in his underground bunker. Doug, whose line of work has earned him the nickname "Rockman", also plans to use a hillside full of boulders as a defense to ward off potential threats. He is also stockpiling coins minted before the 1970s because of their higher silver content, which makes them useful for bartering. Jeff Flaningham is a single, Wisconsin native, who is looking for woman who will live with him in his decommissioned SM-65 Atlas missile silo located in rural central Kansas in the event of a catastrophic event. During the program, Jeff goes on dates with three women he has met through an online dating service. He then arranges a second date with one of them, Stephanie, to go visit his missile silo.
While I’m a big fan of mylar bags and 5 gallon buckets, since my family is just two folks (unless extended family make it to the house in an event), I package things up in 1 gallon mylar bags before placing into the buckets. Allows me to open less food at once to the elements. Sure, I have gamma lids to apply afterwards, and the mylar bags I use have ziplock style tops for resealing, but the less I open to the elements at once the better it will last. To further extend shelf life of opened bags, I have a large supply of small silica gel packs that I can toss a few into open dry good bags. Once I finish the bags I can reuse the packs by gently heating in my Sun Oven.
Per #17: Consider 25 pounds of sugar, even if like me, you don’t use it; it can become like money because so many have a sweet tooth for it. Next: at least the same amount of salt. (I buy sea salt for the iodine within and it’s a mineral all animals need in their diets so it too, can be used like $$. Third: black peppercorns, in past history this was used as money everywhere along the spice routes. Why? Because they have a very very long shelf life without losing potency. Then buy a pepper grinder, coffee/spice grinder and/or a mortar and pestle.
In some parts of the world, mosquitoes, flies, and other biting insects are major vectors for extremely serious diseases, such as malaria, African sleeping sickness, dengue fever, or lymphatic filariasis. The same is not a grave concern in more temperate climates; although malaria used to be a problem in some of the southern states, it has been eradicated by 1951. Today, some of the most serious incidents in the US and in Europe are the occassional cases of Lyme borreliosis or the West Nile virus.
I called a Silicon Valley sage, Stewart Brand, the author and entrepreneur whom Steve Jobs credited as an inspiration. In the sixties and seventies, Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog” attracted a cult following, with its mixture of hippie and techie advice. (The motto: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”) Brand told me that he explored survivalism in the seventies, but not for long. “Generally, I find the idea that ‘Oh, my God, the world’s all going to fall apart’ strange,” he said.
Lastly, this list is primarily for Sheltering in Place and the requirements/resources the average person would be able to lay their hands on. This doesn’t take more extreme climates into consideration but should still provide a base regardless of where you live. For other lists you can check out our Resources page. For something more specific to the Bug Out Bag checklist, click here. Also this list is going to be missing the specifics of the amounts because each family or individual is different. So without further ado, here we go.
Food prep gear. As discussed in section 4.3, one of the best ways to cook food or to sterilize drinking water on the go is to have several portable propane tanks, a miniature stove ($13), and a lightweight covered pot ($28). Some plastic dinnerware ($13) can be a nice touch. Make sure that the stove fits your propane tanks; you may need a Lindal valve adapter ($20) if not.
Tim Chang, a forty-four-year-old managing director at Mayfield Fund, a venture-capital firm, told me, “There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens.” He said, “I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to.” He and his wife, who is in technology, keep a set of bags packed for themselves and their four-year-old daughter. He told me, “I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’ ”
Forums and Facebook groups are littered with the same fundamental questions asked over and over again, but they often give incomplete, conflicting, or even dangerous answers. Then we’d read a blog where the author did some quick googling and cranked out a post just to get some traffic. Or we’d have to dig through crazy propaganda and extreme political opinions in the hopes of finding good advice. It drove us mad — we just wanted the facts and straightforward answers!

Sometimes, you can't avoid a confrontation. Figure out how to react if somebody asks you to get into a car, demands cash, or barges into your occupied home. It would be a complete shock for you, but they have probably done it before - so you gotta rehearse if you want to have the upper hand. Even if they have a weapon trained on you, it's a game of confidence and wits, not just physical force.

Jim Cobb is the author of Prepper's Home Defense (2012) and Prepper's Complete Guide to Disaster Readiness (2013). He has been a prepper for most of his life and has worked almost twenty years in the security management and investigation fields. He also is the owner and lead trainer for DisasterPrepConsultants.com. Jim's primary home online is found at SurvivalWeekly.com. He lives and works in the Upper Midwest, sequestered in a fortified bunker with his lovely wife and their adolescent weapons of mass destruction.

This military food solution is a prepper favorite. These prepper food storage containers obviously come filled, and are one of the preferred grab-and-go solutions for many mobile kits. MREs were first served to soldiers in 1980 and have been appetizing and disgusting servicemen ever since. I find it odd how polarizing these little packs are and have met people that can’t stand them and other that love them. I always found that the included Tabasco sauce makes any of them easy to hold down. They are designed to have approximately 1300 calories each, broken up into 55% calories from carbs, 35% from fat, and 15% from protein. MREs are pretty resilient, with a shelf life of 3+ years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. At 60 degrees they last over 10 years. They are meant to be mobile and lightweight, which makes them great to include in bug out bags and get home bags. You can grab and go with the best of them with an MRE- no need to set up camping stoves or scrounge up utensils. The included heaters, utensils, and condiments come in handy because the entire contents is encapsulated in a pouch. If you don’t need these items, some MREs are available without the chemical heater at a lower cost. The heaters are pretty neat, and work when one ounce of water is added to the pouch holding magnesium iron. This makes the water boil, and heats up all the chili mac you put next to the heater. Many MREs are sold to civilians without heaters due to shipping regulations, so it is best to have another way to heat them up if that is the case with yours. Even if the MREs you get do include heaters, it is always best to have a backup plan anyways. You can buy a case of twelve MREs with heaters online for relatively cheap:

Josh came to the U.S. in 1991 from Puerto Rico with his parents. They lived in Baltimore for a while and moved south into Calvert County when Josh was in elementary school. “Being around people here is what really got me into the whole idea of survival, you know? Learning to hunt and fish and live with the land instead of just going to a corner store for everything,” he says. Josh married a few years ago, and the couple just had their first child in 2017, a few months after Trump took office. He began to take the idea of preparing for the worst very seriously at that time, and began learning about prepping from Scott.

If this particular calamity strikes, what's the step-by-step playbook you would follow, and how much time would you have to carry out the plan? Will you be sheltering at home, or is this a situation where you need to evacuate? If the answer is "it depends", what would be the key factors, and how quickly would you need to make the final call? If you pick the wrong option, how bad would it be?

They are part of a burgeoning "prepper" movement that believes preparing for the end of civilization is more rational than ridiculing those who do. Once viewed largely as a practice by survivalists on the fringe, prepping has achieved cohesion and community in the Internet age through best-selling writers, bloggers, risk assessors, conspiracy theorists and companies that cater to preppers' needs.
Scott owns a nice bit of property in the county, over thirty acres, mostly wooded, on which he does some of his own hunting. He had an underground shelter installed somewhere on his land about 8 years ago, a choice that was precipitated by the economic downturn that coincided with Obama’s first term in office. It’s a rather large eight-person, three month shelter, that only his and Josh’s family know about. Even though it was a large investment for him, Scott believes a nuclear or biological threat is less likely that something more along the lines of an EMP strike or total economic collapse. Because of that, much of the shelter acts as secure storage space for a cache of items that would prove valuable in such a scenario: medicine, ammunition, shelf-stable food and common toiletries that will rapidly become luxury items in a post-apocalyptic world. Scott doesn’t think precious metals or cash will be much use if there is no economy to use them in.
Check out our full review of the best emergency water storage containers and tips on how to store water. We recommend that you have the two weeks of water ready, sitting in containers. Don’t depend on finding and filtering water, or filling your bathtub, for this two-week period. It’s very likely you’ll have access to portable water filters and other water treatment methods because of your bug out bags, but think of those as a bonus backup.
The stories of alcoholic beverages historically being safer to drink than unfermented ones are apocryphal at best; however, as any 17th-century sailor would tell you, the addition of some spirits to potable water that's been sitting around for too long will make it much more palatable. Liquor distillation was originally invented in part for medical purposes, and alcohol can be used as a solvent to dissolve medicinal herbs -- and also to knock out patients during good old-fashioned fallout-shelter surgery. High-proof alcohol can be used as an antiseptic, and it does a great job of cleaning wounds and preventing infection.
It was, however, the first spiritual healing session since Andrew: took over. Andrew: is a Mennonite, hardly a contemporary sect of Christianity—the denomination is currently split on whether homosexuality is a sin. Andrew: believes Christians are being persecuted in the United States today, and the “sodomites” are lucky. Because they “don’t have children,” he says, the Department of Human Services can’t take their kids away, like they did his first daughter 30 years ago when the 22-month-old burned herself on a range stove and Andrew: refused to take her to the hospital because he doesn’t trust doctors. I asked what he meant by sodomites. “The gay community,” he says. “The scripture calls them sodomites, so we have to be honest. They’re not gay at all; usually they’re very unhappy.”
Growing your own fruits and vegetables is a slow and gradual process, requiring at least one growing season and one harvesting season. Approach this in a smart way by purchasing a packet of seasonally relevant seeds when you first begin, which can be as little as $1. Alternatively you could also buy one of our Heirloom survival seed vaults which contains hundreds of great seeds with 20+ vegetables. Grow them continuously and then jar or pickle them when the time comes to harvest. Pickled foods that are well-sealed and kept at temperatures below 75 degrees can last up to three years. In addition to this, grow herbs for medicinal and taste purposes. Once you invest a couple of dollars here and there to growing food—even small amounts in your kitchen—it is truly a great return on investment requiring only a few dollars and some sweat equity.

First aid: Many of the first aid kits you’ll find in Amazon searches aren’t good enough for survival scenarios (regardless of what their marketing says) because they’re meant for daily use or OSHA work compliance. Invest in a high-quality kit that includes supplies for more serious injuries like broken bones or deep, bleeding wounds. Frankly, we’ve never found an off-the-shelf kit we’re 100% happy with, but a great starter option is this Adventure Medical Fundamentals Kit.

However, I submit that disaster preparedness is not inherently a fool's game and that the kind of prepper described I just described is not the definitive picture. The Red Cross, for example, sells bug-out bags, a staple of any prepper's gear. How crazy is it to follow the Red Cross's preparedness advice? Not very. And so much about doomsday prepping is about just having a plan, something most people don't have.
Heck, even if you do have a nearby water source, it may take surprisingly little to spoil it: for example, after an unusually powerful storm, floodwaters can carry toxic sewage from treatment plants and into rivers and lakes. All in all, stockpiling some amount of drinking water is just a smart, low-effort prepper strategy, especially in areas with an elevated likelihood of large-scale natural disasters or industrial accidents.

I made the mistake of trying to wake people up to my concept of what the country was coming to. My view of shtf and how i thought it was going to happen. I also told people about my prepping and how i believed it would help. Now i’m pretty sure if anything did occur i would have a few or more uninvited guests. The one guy literally said “Im coming to your house if shit goes down” No the hell you aren’t. I tell people these things so they will prepare themselves. Or help them awaken to the things… Read more »

One major upside of freeze-dried food is its convenience. Since all its water content has been removed—via a process that involves exposing food to subzero temperatures, while removing the resulting water vapor with a vacuum—it’s easier than canned goods to transport on the fly. To “cook” Wise Company’s six-grain Apple Cinnamon Cereal, you just boil three and a half cups of water, dump in the powdery contents of the bag (minus the oxygen absorber), and cover the pot for 12 to 15 minutes.
Doomsday prepping is an American invention, born from the nuclear panics of the 1950s. (Before that, survivalism was just called surviving.) Doomsday preppers stock up on the basics, often in accordance with the so-called “Rule of Threes,” which holds that a person in a crisis can survive for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without security.

Peanut butter: High in protein, calories, and is very filling. Fun fact, peanut butter acts as a basis for a product called ‘plumpy nut’, which is given to children in the developing world suffering from malnutrition. This is because it is seriously rich in calories and contains the essential fats your body needs. Remember, in a survival situation, calories mean energy, and energy means survival.

“I started saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, what does the government know that we don’t know?’ ” Hall said. In 2008, he paid three hundred thousand dollars for the silo and finished construction in December, 2012, at a cost of nearly twenty million dollars. He created twelve private apartments: full-floor units were advertised at three million dollars; a half-floor was half the price. He has sold every unit, except one for himself, he said.

Thanks for the comment Thomas. Just curious, how do you cook with your dehydrated mushrooms? I like to use frozen vegetables and dehydrate them. Frozen carrots that are cut into the circles dehydrate down to about the size of a pencil eraser. They plump up nice when rehydrated and you can’t tell the difference. Some veggies seem to work better than others.
Doomsday prepping is an American invention, born from the nuclear panics of the 1950s. (Before that, survivalism was just called surviving.) Doomsday preppers stock up on the basics, often in accordance with the so-called “Rule of Threes,” which holds that a person in a crisis can survive for three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without security.
Water is truly the staff of life, without it, you will die in just a few days. Assume that for whatever reason, your taps won’t work – there is no water coming into your home. What else do you have? Do you have bottled water somewhere? Did you know there is about 50 gallons of water stored in your water heater? There’s also a few gallons in the tank of your toilet! If you have an outside water source – such as a lake, creek or storm drain – do you have a way to filter it? Your first goal with water should be to be able to provide your family with 2 weeks worth of water and a way to continue filtering found water after that. Here is a great place to start learning about water.
It used to be that dashcams were prohibitively expensive; but today, the prices start at $50, so it makes sense to give the devices a try. I can recommend Rexing V1 ($100), but there are countless other options to choose from. The bottom line is, if you own a car, it's probably the most affordable and meaningful liability insurance policy you can get.

Sometimes, you can't avoid a confrontation. Figure out how to react if somebody asks you to get into a car, demands cash, or barges into your occupied home. It would be a complete shock for you, but they have probably done it before - so you gotta rehearse if you want to have the upper hand. Even if they have a weapon trained on you, it's a game of confidence and wits, not just physical force.

I used to focus only on preparing for earthquakes and other natural disasters. That changed in 2011 when I went to my first protest, an Occupy Oakland action, with a medic bag. I didn't know yet that I'd be out there for hours, so I didn't have supplies I consider basic now — food, caffeine, extra smokes, insoles for my combat boots. I didn't know how aggressive the police would be, and the handkerchief around my neck was more for a punk look than medical necessity. I hadn't received formal training to be a street medic; I just happened to know first aid and CPR and wanted to help. I carried a 15-pound bag on my back, full of medical supplies, mainly gauze and tape but also things like tourniquets that I hoped I wouldn't have to use. I was scared — I'd had rubber bullets shot at me the night before — but I was determined to drop off water to the protesters and make sure that people had sterile supplies.

Don't hit the gym. Hold off with intense workouts at least until you are close to your target weight. Daily exercise schedules are hard to keep for more than a couple weeks, especially if you lead a busy life; on top of that, a drastic increase in physical activity can trigger cravings or upend your nutritional needs. If you are itching to burn some extra fat, incorporate less punishing activities into your daily routine - say, walking or leisurely biking to work.
It was, however, the first spiritual healing session since Andrew: took over. Andrew: is a Mennonite, hardly a contemporary sect of Christianity—the denomination is currently split on whether homosexuality is a sin. Andrew: believes Christians are being persecuted in the United States today, and the “sodomites” are lucky. Because they “don’t have children,” he says, the Department of Human Services can’t take their kids away, like they did his first daughter 30 years ago when the 22-month-old burned herself on a range stove and Andrew: refused to take her to the hospital because he doesn’t trust doctors. I asked what he meant by sodomites. “The gay community,” he says. “The scripture calls them sodomites, so we have to be honest. They’re not gay at all; usually they’re very unhappy.”
Interestingly, driving and safeguarding your finances have something in common: when you end up hurting another person in an at-fault accident, they may go after your savings or real estate to recoup medical expenses, lost wages, and other costs. So, in addition to driving defensively, have a look at your insurance policy. The minimum liability coverage mandated by the state can be as low as $15,000; relatively few victims will settle with the insurer for that amount if they think that taking you to court could net them ten times as much. Bumping your limit to $250,000 is usually pretty cheap. In fact, if you have collision coverage, you can more than make up for it by increasing your deductible to $1,000.
Welcome to my site! My name is Nettie and I started this blog to provide simple tools to help Preppers. I am a Girl Scout Prepper. “Be prepared! A Girl Scout is ready to help out wherever she is needed. Willingness to serve is not enough; you must know how to do the job well, even in an emergency" (the motto, in the 1947 Girl Scout Handbook). Being a Prepper has been a blessing to me, my family, and friends on more then one occasion. You'll find these stories throughout this blog. You will also find prepper supplies checklists, prepper events, cheap food storage ideas, emergency heat sources, survival books recommendations, reviews on power outage lights, printable prepper pdfs, and articles on emergency disaster preparedness. Click here to read more
They are part of a burgeoning "prepper" movement that believes preparing for the end of civilization is more rational than ridiculing those who do. Once viewed largely as a practice by survivalists on the fringe, prepping has achieved cohesion and community in the Internet age through best-selling writers, bloggers, risk assessors, conspiracy theorists and companies that cater to preppers' needs.

Before fire season, move combustibles away from your house. Fences and dry vegetation give fires a place to grow, says Jonathan Cox at Cal Fire, California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Hosing down your house won’t help much, either, he says: “The way a lot of these homes burn is through something called ember cast, when embers from the fire fly over and drop little fires everywhere. With a huge ember cast, hosing down your house doesn’t do much.”

These documents will assist rescue workers and first responders in identification and in providing you with adequate medical care, if needed. It also would not hurt to include some pictures of yourself with family members. I like to store this information on a flash drive along with other information such as survival manuals, home inventories and such.

Your list may be completely different from mine, but I believe the items contained in this list of supplies will be common to most people and more importantly will be required if you are going to be as prepared as possible if the manure hits the hydro-electric powered oscillating air current distribution device. This list is not all-encompassing either. I am probably not going to have blacksmith supplies or leather working tools although I can see the use in each of those. This list is going to be for the average person to get by if we have a SHTF event, not start a new life in the wild west. Please let me know what additional items you would recommend and I’ll keep this list updated so you can print it out whenever you need to purchase items or want to build your supplies out.
About a month after I left meetup 2.0 at Pizza Hut, former attendee Garland Fitzhugh called to tell me it’s become more of an ‘eat-up’ than a prepper meetup—fair, considering there’s been no local calamity to keep the survivalist group on its toes. Allen emails meeting suggestions to a prepper listserv, asking them to focus on prepping situations they can actually influence. He may as well type in Wingdings. A former Navy technician, Allen spent most of the meeting on his phone; his ears only perk up when Andrew: says something about naval intelligence that piques his interest. “I try not to do that too much,” he tells me later.
158. Baofeng handheld – If you’re looking for a handheld HAM radio, Baofeng delivers. FCC certified if you want to go HAM without a huge setup this 2 pack handheld is the right way to start. Before you buy a radio and start broadcasting you need to get familiar with the laws and the FCC and consider getting a Technicians license to be able to broadcast legally. You can ‘receive’ with no license, but to broadcast you need to be certified.
I am still fairly new with prepping. This site and the emails have helped me to focus. I also have many prepper friends. I don’t buy store eggs any more because so many people have them for sale. I want to get chickens, but the town where I live does not allow them. I am more organized now than I was a year ago. One thing I’ve done was buy the little book Live on Wheat, which is also about beans and sprouts. I do have wheat and a mill, but I want to develop the lifestyle as well as gather the “stuff.”
Sometimes, you can't avoid a confrontation. Figure out how to react if somebody asks you to get into a car, demands cash, or barges into your occupied home. It would be a complete shock for you, but they have probably done it before - so you gotta rehearse if you want to have the upper hand. Even if they have a weapon trained on you, it's a game of confidence and wits, not just physical force.
These are not your typical 5 gallon buckets from the Home Depot. Food grade buckets are made of a different type of plastic to prevent leaching. They cost a little more than your typical buckets, but are worth it for the added safety and flavor of your food. Food storage buckets should be made with high density polyethylene without BPAs, and be manufactured to meet NMFC, FDA, and UFC requirements. A bucket could have the triangle on the bottom with the number two and the HDPE mark, but not be food grade. This could be due to the construction method, not being able to provide a secure seal, made of reused materials, or even reused themselves after chemicals or paint. HDPE buckets are still porous, and can absorb chemicals stored in it. Make sure that you purchase from a reliable source so you don’t get duped. If you do decide to get used buckets, make sure they have only been used to store food and be prepared to clean them thoroughly.

Hall led me through the garage, down a ramp, and into a lounge, with a stone fireplace, a dining area, and a kitchen to one side. It had the feel of a ski condo without windows: pool table, stainless-steel appliances, leather couches. To maximize space, Hall took ideas from cruise-ship design. We were accompanied by Mark Menosky, an engineer who manages day-to-day operations. While they fixed dinner—steak, baked potatoes, and salad—Hall said that the hardest part of the project was sustaining life underground. He studied how to avoid depression (add more lights), prevent cliques (rotate chores), and simulate life aboveground. The condo walls are fitted with L.E.D. “windows” that show a live video of the prairie above the silo. Owners can opt instead for pine forests or other vistas. One prospective resident from New York City wanted video of Central Park. “All four seasons, day and night,” Menosky said. “She wanted the sounds, the taxis and the honking horns.”

For personnel who are flying over large bodies of water, in additional to wearing a survival suit over cold water, a survival kit may have additional items such as flotation vests, sea anchor, fishing nets, fishing equipment, fluorescent sea marking dye, pyrotechnical signals, a survival radio and/or radio-beacon, formerly a distress marker light replaced by a flashing strobe, formerly a seawater still[4] or chemical desalinator kit now replaced by a hand pumped reverse osmosis desalinator (MROD) for desalinating seawater, a raft repair kit, a paddle, a bailer and sponge, sunscreen, medical equipment, a whistle, a compass, and a sun shade hat.